[P2P-F] Fwd: Why does America Torture?

Wed Dec 31 09:04:53 CET 2014

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tikkun <magazine at tikkun.org>
Date: Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 12:57 AM
Subject: Why does America Torture?
To: Michelsub2004 at gmail.com

          *Editor's Note: *
> The article below by Prof. Alan Gilbert raises important ethical issues
> that must concern everyone on the planet. It reminds us that the most
> important criminal justice legacy of the Obama Administration may be its
> willingness to let the torturers go free, without any attempt to hold them
> responsible for their actions--thus signaling to future generations of
> torturers that the worst they might expect is to have their acts (but not
> their names) revealed in public by a Congressional investigation, and that
> they are free to defend their acts of torture as "necessary" or "justified"
> without fear of prosecution. That, of course, is an open invitation for the
> next generation of torturers to continue or even broaden the range of
> people they torture and the techniques they use, knowing that even a
> supposedly liberal Administration will avoid confronting, much less
> prosecuting, them. Please read this article carefully and you'll see why my
> reaction is to say: Shame on Obama and jail the torturers!  If you
> appreciate this article, and want to see Tikkun continue to publish, this
> is one more reason to make a tax-deductible contribution to Tikkun NOW at
> www.tikkun.org
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>  --Rabbi Michael Lerner              rabbilerner.tikkun at gmail.com
>   *Why Does America Torture?*
> by Prof. Alan Gilbert  John Evans Professor at the Josef Korbel School of
> International Studies of the University of Denver
>
>    On December 21, the *New York Time*s called editorially for the
> prosecution of torturers, based on the Senate Intelligence Committee's 600
> page Executive Summary on torture.  The *Times* says rightly that the US
> government will only be considered a defender of human rights if it acts
> against these powerful torturers under the law.  And beyond the Senate
> report, it names Cheney and his minions as those who need to be prosecuted,
> though interestingly not President George W. Bush who is plainly guilty of
> ordering torture.
> MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2014
>  Why does America torture?
>          On December 21, the *New York Time*s called editorially for the
> prosecution of torturers, based on the Senate Intelligence Committee's 600
> page Executive Summary on torture.  The *Times* says rightly that the US
> government will only be considered a defender of human rights if it acts
> against these powerful torturers under the law.  And beyond the Senate
> report, it names Cheney and his minions as those who need to be prosecuted,
> though interestingly not President George W. Bush who is plainly guilty of
> ordering torture.
>         For the *Times*, in its effort to restore the law, criminal
> Presidents must apparently, no matter what their crimes, must go
> scot-free.  But if the President need pay no attention, so much for the
> rule of law.
>  ***
>       The *Times* and others need to shed their surviving obsequiousness
> to torture and murder... See here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=o2vhllXdGzo7VbtspAfLtpp74C%2B7b0x9>
> .
>  ***
>       As intelligence professionals like Ray  McGovern have long
> insisted, torture never gets useful information.  Why then is it done?
>         In an article from *Veterans Today*, a journal of the
> "Clandestine Community," Jim W. Dean underlines the likely planting of
> false information which leads to repulsive foreign policy decisions - the
> second Iraq aggression, the disgrace of black sites, the corrupting of the
> European community  (the carefully blacking out of names of allies in the
> Senate Report by the solicitous CIA\Obama administration), and most
> importantly, the trashing of the law against torture as the centerpiece of
> international law and of American law. (h/t Darrol)  It is this last point
> on which the *Times*' editorial finally touches.
>  ***
>      *Habeas corpus* - the right of each prisoner to a day in court and
> not to be tortured - is, as Philip Soper argues, the central feature of a
> system of law as opposed to despotism.  It is what
> had distinguished (somewhat, if one does not disregard genocide against
> indigenous people, the ordinary practice of slavery, Jim Crow and the like,
> which mark American history...) the US or English system of law from, say,
> the Chinese.
>  ***
>       The Chinese Communists were modern revolutionaries, but their view
> and practice of law were from the Emperors.  To be just now in Dharamsala,
> to hear from Ama Adhe about her torture - see here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NhgRvozQ%2BOPD3%2FFAG%2Fg%2FfsOdEbZdmYvZ>
>  and here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=tu7AY9yAgT0ESgSYr%2FiCKpp74C%2B7b0x9> -
> where she ended up eating the leather off boots, and was one of three
> women, out of 400, who survived 3 years in a Chinese prison in the late
> 1950s (she went on to be brutalized for another 27 years; she has no
> hearing in her right ear so Yeshi, the translator had to sit to her left
> for the questions; she has the Dalai Lama's spirit of compassion, wanting a
> happy life for the Chinese so long as Tibet is independent, and is a kind
> of angel...) is to understand how barbaric the Chinese rulers  were and
> are.
>  ***
>        The Chinese have but to point to American practices in the black
> sites and Guantanamo underlined in the 600 page Executive Summary of the
> Senate Torture Report - published against the will of Obama and the CIA
> under tremendous pressure from below and from some determined Senators -
> and there is no difference in kind...
>  ***
>       But the clash between* habeas corpus,* enshrined in the Magna Carta
> in 1215 and then fought over for 400 years or the international agreements
> making an absolute ban on torture and which are also centerpieces of
> American law (and for which the Nuremburg and Tokyo tribunals, under
> American prosecutorial leadership, executed Nazi and Japanese war criminals
> after World War II), and these Chinese/ Bush-Cheney enacted/Obama-protected
> practices is noisome.
>  ***
>        Writing for intelligence professionals, Jim Dean says that Israeli
> intelligence could plant false stories, and these would gain high currency
> in the US through torture.  Here is the core of his account:
>       “'Here is why torture is a horrible problem, because corrupt
> interrogators can lead a person while they are interrogating them, telling
> them what they really want them to tell them and they will stop torturing
> them,'” he continued [no, ripping human bodies apart is horrible and not
> because of the bad information it elicits].
>        “'And then what will happen is that someone would submit a false
> report like the Israelis, and the US intelligence... will end up torturing
> two people to confirm it, and then the government actually gets hustled in
> doing something based on a completely false report,'” he explained.
>          “'And this actually makes it a threat to the national security,
> because corrupt insiders inside the government can rig events, like they
> had done for the Iraq war,... to initiate a war,'” the journalist noted."
>  ***
>        There is a large element of truth here: once a government goes in
> for torture, it does not get the truth *and* is extremely easy to
> manipulate, plant false information on from on high (most likely) and below.
>  ***
>       Dean's argument is the  theory of disillusioned CIA critics of why
> the US invaded Iraq yet again (now we are on the third round with
> Obama...).  For there is no plausible "national interest" in these elite
> aggressions.  They have forfeited American strength and revealed the
> rottenness of American power, including its harms to most Americans.
>  ***
>       But Dean's explanation is too convenient, blaming Israel (however
> reactionary its apparent ethnic cleansing in Palestine) for what are
> plainly crimes executed in accordance with (fantasies about) American
> "interests"....
>  ***
>        For the CIA, not Israel, under the urging of Bush and Cheney,
> enacted torture; the decent people both there (such as Ray McGovern) and in
> the FBI - Ali Soufan - have criticized these crimes relentlessly.  McGovern
> even rightly calls for the abolition of the CIA.  See here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=%2F2EP29uT7ofnOMc7RKO%2FGpp74C%2B7b0x9>
> .
>  ***
>        I conjoin with Dean's comments a post I put up in 2009 on Mr.
> Cheney "What the Torturer Knew."  What is most clear about the barbarity of
> American torture is that the CIA torturers were even
> repulsed themselves by water boarding Abu Zubaydah 82 times, asking in the
> middle to stop.  For this was the practice, as the Senate Report makes
> clear, of "ensuring" the prisoner knew nothing beyond what he had confessed
> not under torture, a criminal policy that took torture on many individuals,
> without any justifiable suspicion, to the max....  David Addington,
> Cheney's "man," stilled them: "Be Men!"  But torture did not - ever, once -
> get any useful information (see the Torture Report and Andrew Sullivan
> here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=F9Wc8zbuV5RqeMU66stjoZp74C%2B7b0x9> and
> the*New York Times* editorial below).
>  ***
>       What it did do was seek for ties between Saddam and Al-Qaida.  The
> US plan was to invade Iraq from the first day of the Bush administration -
> see the Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's memoir, *The Price of Loyalty*.
> O'Neill who had been in the Ford and Reagan administrations, was rightly
> confused by a cabinet discussion at the first meeting in January 2001 which
> assumed the administration would invade Iraq, making tactical plans...but
> failed to discuss: why?
>  ***
>            Bush and his minions fixed on this policy without any clear
> justification.  Cheney looked for any "prop" for his assertion of ties
> between Al-Qaida and Saddam; the "dark side" was his means.
>
> ***
>
>          But no such ties between Saddam and Al-Qaida existed...
>  ***
>          Torture is also, as Elaine Scarry underlines in her remarkable
> book, *The Body in Pain*, a way of asserting domination, of threatening
> or trying to scare people widely.
>  ***
>         But Richard Cheney is more frightening to Americans than to
> others.  And in fact, his policy also yields justified hatred among many -
> recall the* Count of Monte Christo *and then ask: how many Monte Christos
> has the US minted at Guantanamo...
>  ***
>        It was Cheney's desire -  underlined in  his loathsome  "Meet the
> Press" interview last Sundayhere
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=5Ktd18yHYd%2BCV3LzmTChd5p74C%2B7b0x9>,
> a former Secretary of Defense, Ford Chief of Staff, V-P Mafioso, strutting
> and screaming - to get the information he *already knew* by torture.
>  ***
>      So "What the Torturer Knew" - see below - is the primary and obvious
> aspect of torture.  That the neocons, including Israelis or certain
> influential Straussians, ran Cheney is not obvious.  That Cheney bought
> much of their lies/fantasies and sought to carry them out is clear.
>         That Israel is becoming, in its Occupation of Palestine, more and
> more of a depraved racist regime, murdering 426 children in Gaza last
> summer for one Israeli child murdered by Hamas rockets, is clear.
>         That Israel and the United States, its endless supplier of
> weapons like the named for genocide "Apache" helicopter, need to be stopped
> is clear.
>
> ***
>     But that the tail wags the dog, that the US, across administrations,
> does not benefit from its relation with Israel, is not clear.  For a long
> time, the US played divide and rule in the Middle East to control the oil
> and establish military bases.
>
> ***
>        Now, with the arrival of nonviolent Palestinian resistance (BDS,
> in the villages and the like), with the increasing knowledge of Americans
> (AIPAC has given up on the campuses now; there is too much evidence about
> what Israel does, and “hasbara” – Israeli public relations – will not cover
> forced transfer, lies about negotiations, and  wanton murders…).
>          Israel is becoming increasingly isolated even in America...
>  ***
>       The American invasions of the Middle East starting with the first
> Gulf War reveal 25 years of decline, the latest with no boots on the ground
> except some mercenary “invisibles,”  are signs of an unpromising, decadent,
> militarist addiction.
>  ***
>     Better the US clean up its torture act; read the Senate Report and
> ask yourself  – are “we” better, in kind, than the hideous IS – and the
> difficulty in the answer  may startle you.  For as Cheney said on *Meet
> the Press*, torturing innocents to death, hung up when their legs were
> broken, in stress positions, and anal rape, no biggie.  The *only* criminals
> are those who did 9/11…See here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=2mskGSWoGTAbnQqOJJI8VMOdEbZdmYvZ>
> .
>
>     Defending the Bill of Rights and human rights promise something
> different...
>  ***
>          Nonetheless, Dean's commentary does suggest one route by which
> those determined to plant false information can gull credulous CIA
> torturers (the latter are sometimes breathed on by Mr. Cheney to spread
> lies; one self-described "Troglodyte"/reactionary on the second floor of
> Langley described how frightened he was when Cheney came down and
> "breathed" on him).
>
> ***
>
>        But the Iraqi engineer "curveball" made up for German intelligence
> a story about mobile bioweapons laboratories.  Germany, a comparatively
> civilized nation, did not use torture. though they "interrogated" him for a
> year and a half.  The engineer wanted and got asylum in Germany.  Yet both
> German and British intelligence warned the US about his "information."  See
> here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=D8ctFsAlY3F7Qm4Z0Jqujpp74C%2B7b0x9>
> .
>
>        Nonetheless, Bush and Powell also picked up and used this
> "information" in speeches pushing for aggression (as Cheney planted front
> page stories in the*New York Times* through access to Judith Miller - via
> his minion Scooter Libby - and then cited those*Times*'s stories as
> "evidence" for Iraqi wmds).
>
> ***
>
>        It is mainly the danger of winds blowing from the top - the
> thuggish Cheney, the hapless and easily incited Bush - and the pressures of
> American militarism or war complex dominated politics funded at a trillion
> dollars a year (the official Pentagon and "intelligence" budgets) - pushing
> things ever to the Right.  The latter is what I call the "right wing two
> step" in which one oligarchic party calls out for craziness hoping to win
> elections given a compliant mainstream press, coupled with the other
> oligarchic party putting up little fight - Obama's bombing of Syria is the
> latest illustration.
>
>        Now Senator Mark Udall on the torture report, Obama on recognizing
> Cuba are counterexamples, which in their difficulty/exceptionalism  - Udall
> and Obama no longer face elections - underline the point.
>  ***
>     The Senate Report misleadingly concentrates on the CIA, leaves aside
> the criminal Bush administration.  And the *Times* editorial restricts
> the matter too much.  So I also include a piece by William Boardman on 12
> top war criminals, CIA director George Tenet and Mitchell and Jesson, the
> “psychologist” novice interrogator/torture enthusiasts being but numbers 11
> and 12 – see also here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=9sN9idGBVD1Ijy1PpNnmBZp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> It is worth taking in how extensive this program was (only Colin Powell
> objected to it, was apparently out of the loop...).
>  ***
>      But while it is surely true, for example, that Jay Bybee or John Yoo
> should be disbarred, the act of rationalizing torture in a position of
> legal responsibility, if Americans still value the rule of law and the
> physical and moral security of citizens, is a war crime for which they
> should be tried….
>
> ***
>      Even Boardman thus adjusts somewhat to the “politics” of the
> powerful.  But Obama, who represented some hope when he came into office,
> has become an accomplice to torture, and the next election (unless Rand
> Paul is nominated and holds onto some principle) will be, without a
> movement from below, between abettors of neo-cons/friends of torturers
> (Hillary supports Obama's initial renunciation of water boarding, yet
> opposes bringing war criminals to justice...see here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=F5HEHKQSWQMnNf8dok0XS8OdEbZdmYvZ>
> ).
>  ***
>        But enough pressure from below on Obama and the appointment of an
> independent prosector who does his job (unlike the one who, as the *Times* pointed
> out, was charged with finding acts of torture beyond those permitted by the
> Bush administration and scandalously brought no charges) may become
> possible.
>  ***
>      I also link here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=4e3%2FFM1rwknvtPf2tK%2F275p74C%2B7b0x9> to
> an article on the edits from the Senate Report by the CIA/Obama of
> names/places of allied torturers (Poland, for example, where one notorious
> black site was). This corrupt editing underlines the wreckage of
>  international law, of which the absolute ban on torture is the
> centerpiece, brought about by the Bush administration.  But there will be a
> fight in Europe to restore these things.  And the UN special rapporteur on
> torture again called, with the Senate report, for trials of the Bush\Cheney
> administration under the Convention against Torture.  Further, as the
> *Times'* editorial insists, the US needs to repudiate these actions
> across the board – Cheney and Bush and the others need to be confronted
> with trials and jail time (capital punishment is a barbaric American thing
> so probably, despite US legal precedent, they haven’t quite earned
> that…)...
>  ***
>         Even Senator Feinstein, a collaborator with torturers, spoke up.
> See here
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=8pBvahSt3lYWnuFDvLgNf5p74C%2B7b0x9>.
> Even the *Times*, which under Bill Keller, propagated the euphemism "very
> harsh interrogations" and refused to look at torture, has now spoken out
> strongly against it.
>  ***
>         It is only being a decent society, having law at all, which hangs
> in the balance…
>   New York Times
> The Opinion Pages
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=olzlErHomzlDBvG5wZaEypp74C%2B7b0x9>
>  | EDITORIAL
> Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses
> *By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Y1TNU46ewwNI6upXid6b9MOdEbZdmYvZ> *DEC.
> 21, 2014
> Photo
>
>
>
>
> Dick Cheney. CreditWin McNamee/Getty Images
>  Since the day President Obama took office, he has failed to bring to
> justice anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects — an
> official government program conceived and carried out in the years after
> the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
>
> He did allow his Justice Department to investigate the C.I.A.'s
> destruction of videotapes of torture sessions and those who may have gone
> beyond the torture techniques authorized by President George W. Bush. But
> the investigation did not lead
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=CXLWO1uDA40ZRK2OcJGVOpp74C%2B7b0x9> to
> any charges being filed, or even any accounting of why they were not filed.
>
> Mr. Obama has said
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=EWG66Y96MdxKeXy6JD00Rpp74C%2B7b0x9> multiple
> times that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” as
> though the two were incompatible. They are not. The nation cannot move
> forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally,
> with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of
> legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels
> of government on down.
>
> Americans have known about many of these acts for years, but the 524-page executive
> summary
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=nV0ydkBVVkJRTIbidCZG2pp74C%2B7b0x9> of
> the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report erases any lingering doubt about their
> depravity and illegality
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ANIO1ulds%2BrhGUFl5mKmppp74C%2B7b0x9>:
> In addition to new revelations of sadistic tactics like “rectal feeding
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Ysqx8cgoQQt7kAXqTmQmCZp74C%2B7b0x9>,”
> scores of detainees were waterboarded, hung by their wrists, confined in
> coffins, sleep-deprived, threatened with death or brutally beaten. In
> November 2002, one detainee who was chained to a concrete floor died of
> “suspected hypothermia.”
>
> These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Y4MUI%2FxXrRowCGsdpXj8%2BZp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> which defines
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=c%2BxWZ%2FH6P%2Fp2wUFy1sKD%2FZp74C%2B7b0x9> torture
> as the intentional infliction of “severe physical or mental pain or
> suffering.” They are also banned by theConvention Against Torture
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=%2FrEh5ztyzDBOOOvH2O9RBcOdEbZdmYvZ>,
> the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that
> requires prosecution of any acts of torture.
>
> So it is no wonder that today’sblinkered apologists
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=BPeSvlGZxaTZ6N%2FEdKdi1pp74C%2B7b0x9> are
> desperate to call these acts anything but torture, which they clearly were.
> As the report reveals, these claims fail for a simple reason: C.I.A.
> officials admitted
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Hq8xJT9Ca32ZmuLhUWHPnZp74C%2B7b0x9> at
> the time that what they intended to do was illegal.
>
> In July 2002, C.I.A. lawyers told the Justice Department that the agency
> needed to use “more aggressive methods” of interrogation that would
> “otherwise be prohibited by the torture statute.” They asked the department
> to promise not to prosecute those who used these methods. When the
> department refused, they shopped around for the answer they wanted. They
> got it from the ideologically driven lawyers in the Office of Legal
> Counsel, who wrote memos fabricating a legal foundation for the methods.
> Government officials now rely on the memos as proof that they sought and
> received legal clearance for their actions. But the report changes the
> game: We now know that this reliance was not made in good faith.
>  No amount of legal pretzel logic can justify the behavior detailed in
> the report. Indeed, it is impossible to read it and conclude that no one
> can be held accountable. At the very least, Mr. Obama needs to authorize a
> full and independent criminal investigation.
>
> The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch are to give
> Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. a letter Monday calling for appointment of
> a special prosecutor to investigate what appears increasingly to be “a vast
> criminal conspiracy, under color of law, to commit torture and other
> serious crimes.”
>  The question everyone will want answered, of course, is: Who should be
> held accountable? That will depend on what an investigation finds, and as
> hard as it is to imagine Mr. Obama having the political courage to order a
> new investigation, it is harder to imagine a criminal probe of the actions
> of a former president.
>
> But any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick
> Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A.
> director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal
> Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=uJ%2Bh4CaGNg%2B611CfR44viJp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose
> Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=IpVWsnNkn%2FSYvL6rwvSb15p74C%2B7b0x9> the
> destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=k8x6mVLNu%2Bz9gg7EKZ8fjZp74C%2B7b0x9>the
> torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen.
>
> One would expect Republicans who have gone hoarse braying about Mr.
> Obama’s executive overreach to be the first to demand accountability, but
> with one notable exception
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=0kkEPZl9%2F7wWjtCW%2BacYm5p74C%2B7b0x9>,
> Senator John McCain, they have either fallen silent oractively
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=MShVXCZc01u6C52OuyWLApp74C%2B7b0x9>
>  defended
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ANIO1ulds%2BpGqYs8Q0uDpZp74C%2B7b0x9>
>  theindefensible
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=sJkkCY9Dog249KfzAnFYZJp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> They cannot even point to any results
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=84nXpQ5X0X%2FyyYdM3XuVbZp74C%2B7b0x9>:
> Contrary to repeated claims by the C.I.A., the report concluded that “at no
> time” did any of these techniques yield intelligence that averted a terror
> attack. And at least 26 detainees were later determined to have been “wrongfully
> held
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=2fGS%2B%2F8FjsviM9au%2Bz%2FrkZp74C%2B7b0x9>
> .”
>  ***
>  "Veterans Today, Military Affairs Journal of the Clandestine Community
> *Insiders mislead US based on false CIA interrogation reports: Analyst*
>  US Senate Intelligence Committee released a report last week detailing
> CIA torture techniques.
>  Sun Dec 21, 2014 7:43AM GMT
>              *A political commentator says “insiders” mislead the US
> government to make crucial decisions based on false information they
> receive from terror suspects under harsh tactics.*
>  Speaking to Press TV on Thursday, Jim W. Dean, managing editor of
> Veterans Today from Atlanta, said the CIA uses very skilful interrogators
> who lead suspects into telling them what they want to hear.
>  “It has tremendous potential for abuse because if you get somebody like
> the Dick Cheney crowd looking for some kind of a justification for
> launching an attack or about an incoming threat, they can put out the word
> that they need confirmation on this or that and that they need to have the
> interrogators bring in people to confirm things,” Dean said.
>  “Here is what torture is a horrible problem, because corrupt
> interrogators can lead a person while they are interrogating them, telling
> them what they really want them to tell them and they will stop torturing
> them,” he continued.
>  “And then what will happen is that someone would submit a false report
> like the Israelis, and the US intelligence... will end up torturing two
> people to confirm it, and then the government actually gets hustled in
> doing something based on a completely false report,” he explained.
>  “And this actually makes it a threat to the national security, because
> corrupt insiders inside the government can rig events, like they had done
> for the Iraq war,... to initiate a war,” the journalist noted.
>  Dean said this is “one of the biggest threats that we face and they are
> always done by insider people.”
>  The US Senate Intelligence Committee released a report last week
> detailing torture techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency during
> the presidency of George W. Bush.
>  The report confirmed that the CIA used extreme methods such as
> waterboarding, sleep deprivation, mock executions and threats that the
> relatives of the prisoners would be sexually abused.
>  An analysis of the report by the Nation Magazine showed that human
> experimentation was a “core feature” of the spy agency’s torture program.
>
> ***
>   "WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2009
> Democratic-Individuality.Blogspot.com
> What the Torturer Knew
>       The FBI interrogator Ali Soufan recently reported in testimony to
> the Senate that he connected with  Abu Zubaydah by treating his wounds and
> talking to him.  Abu Zubaydah gave him information which led to the capture
> of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.  As Soufan testified in answer to Senator
> Lindsay Graham from South Carolina who tried to defend Vice President
> Cheney, outsmarting people for information is tougher than beating them to
> a pulp. Graham used to know this – he once opposed torture.  But now he
> said “these techniques have been used since the Middle Ages”; there must
> be, he tried to suggest, a reason. Thuggery – scaring the life out of many
> people by randomly brutalizing whomever one can lay one’s hands on – is, I
> am afraid, the ordinary reason of corrupt kings and
> princes.   Waterboarding has been used since the Inquisition, as was
> burning Jewish teenagers at the stake (see Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws,
> book 26).  Thus, the mark of law and civilization at all – as opposed to
> tyranny – is the absolute ban on waterboarding and torture.  The rump
> elements of the Republican Party have zealously become the partisans of
> Torquemada.
>        In one of now “Judge” Jay Bybee’s torture memos released recently
> by Obama, it reports that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times
> in a month.  This was plainly crazy even for torturers and the CIA men who
> did the job apparently complained about it.  Zubaydah was waterboarded over
> 80 times.  But Soufan had procured the only information Zubaydah had.  What
> the torturer wanted wasn’t information from Zubaydah; what the torturer
> wanted was what the torturer already knew.
>       Vice President Cheney wanted Zubaydah or anybody else (didn’t
> matter who) to give up the information that Al-Qaida had ties with
> Saddam.  The fact that this claim was untrue and bizarre – Al Qaida is a
> fanatical offshoot of the Sunnis and Saddam was secular and locked up and
> killed fanatical and other Sunnis and Shia – did not interfere.  Cheney is
> way smart compared to most bureaucrats and politicians, but he works best
> through silence and intimidation. His own ignorance was not obstacle.  If
> he forced enough torture, he could get a “justification” for aggressing
> against Iraq.  And Cheney knew with a passion that this must be right.  He
> even went down into the lower floors of the CIA to breathe on  lower level
> CIA officers and get the information he wanted.  He would break his
> subordinates in order to break the prisoners.
>        Cheney, Rice and Bush are all still quick to summon up 9/11.  But
> not only did they give up the search for Osama Bin Laden; they used
> “enhanced interrogation,” that is torture, to try to force what they
> already knew out of the tortured.  That is the only thing torture is good
> for. Note the particular criminality of the torture – it was not a bizarre
> response to 9/11; it was an obsessively calculated action to justify a long
> planned aggression against Saddam.  All the excuses for the criminals
> cannot hide the fact that what they did was not an attempt to gain
> information about 9/11.  That was not what Cheney knew, and Ali Soufan had
> already done this. Note: even the threadbare rationalizations for torture
> of the American establishment and the Democratic Party (these people were
> desperate and had lost their bearings because of 9/11) do not justify this
> policy. Gaining information to prevent an attack from Al-Qaida had nothing
> to do with the torture.  Instead, it was designed to confirm a war which
> the “Cheney-Rumsfeld” cabal had determined on long before 9/11.  Secretary
> of Commerce Paul O’Neill in his book with Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty
> tells the fascinating story that he walked into his first cabinet meeting
> with Bush and the others were discussing the tactics of going to war with
> Iraq. Weren’t you supposed, he wondered, to discuss whether and why to go
> to war first?  He had been in the Ford and Reagan administrations and also
> wondered what happened to cabinet discussions of policy.  Under the
> influence of Rove and Cheney, cabinet discussions under George W. Bush only
> focused on politics.  Perhaps that is a reason for the singular disasters
> in every aspect of public policy which the Bush-Cheney regime achieved.  In
> any case, what the torturer did to these “high value detainees in secret
> prisons” later became the American way at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and
> Bagram.  The torturer used  naked power to enact his own fantasies, which
> had nothing to do with protecting the United States against another 9/11.
>         In addition,  the use by the CIA of the techniques of the
> psychologists Mitchell and Jesson, who advised the SERE (Survival, Evasion,
> Resistance, Escape) program for American soldiers who might be captured was
> also an offshoot of Cheney’s move to “dark side.” But as sloppy as Cheney
> (instilling fear substitutes for finding out anything) or perhaps a
> blowhard intimidated by Cheney, CIA chief George Tenet could not be
> bothered to find out whether either of these “psychologists” had ever done
> an interrogation.  They hadn’t.  The FBI agent Ali Soufan knew how to get
> information.  In contrast, the torturer knew already what he would elicit
> from prisoners.  Questioning suspects had nothing to do with it.  He would
> see to it that the screws were applied to them until they gave up what he
> knew.
>         The CIA did not succeed with Zubaydah (though apparently they
> made him quite crazy) or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.  It did succeed with
> Al-Libi, who recently died in a prison in Syria under mysterious
> circumstances.   Under torture, Al-Libi told the CIA what Cheney wanted to
> hear.  Colin Powell then prepared his February 16, 2003  UN speech, trying
> to weed out some believable claim among the Cheney/neocon fantasies by
> going to CIA headquarters for four days and throwing away papers in
> disgust.  Powell tried to resist the craziness, but his obsequiousness to
> the President meant that he had ultimately to choose something that the
> torturer knew.  He settled on Al-Libi’s words under torture (he may or may
> not have known that Al-Libi was tortured).  He gave a speech in which the
> only true things he said were his name and that he was Secretary of State
> of the United States.  As his assistant in the State Department, Richard
> Haas (one of many decent civil servants who resigned from the Bush
> administration) later said, “It was the most embarrassing speech he gave in
> his life.”
>          The torturer knew what he wanted.  But there was a huge anti-war
> movement of which I was a part, largely unaddressed in the mainstream
> press.  The invasion of Iraq – an act of aggression, without even a UN
> Security Council sanction – was never a popular war.  Even the initial
> blitzkrieg and careful close-up photographing of the toppling of a statue
> of Saddam deeply impressed only the mainstream or access media, the talking
> heads who all say what will get the President and Vice-President to give
> them access.  The New York times via Judith Miller printed the words of
> Ahmed Chalabi (the corrupt Iraqi exile the neocons, especially Cheney
> relied on) on the front page.  Cheney then invoked the New York Times on
> Meet the Press the same day: “Even the Times agrees.”  Everyone needs to
> say what the Vice President already knew.
>          There is something deeply dishonorable about a war waged at all
> costs, with threadbare stories justifying it.  The administration could not
> find weapons of mass destruction.  It could not find ties to
> Al-Qaeda.  Still what the torturer knew possessed others even prestigious
> Democratic Senators like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden who feared to be
> thought weak on "national security."  What the torturer knew passed for
> American wisdom even in the mainstream news downplaying and distorting
>  protests.   Months and months passed, and later there was a stolen
> election (exit polling which has never been wrong in Presidential elections
> indicated that Kerry had won).  For another four years, the torturer sailed
> on.
>       What the torturer knew was a lie that served the torturer.  What
> the torturer knew betrayed what had been decent in American policy (at
> least the CIA tortured in the dark, though foreign minions) and had made
> America comparatively respected in the world.  What torture obtains is the
> fantasy that the torturer knew. That is the only truth in the show “24.”
> which is television for the torturer.  That torture elicits only the
> torturer's fantasies is the truth about torture. That it reveals only the
> degradation of the torturer - Cheney strove long to remain silent and
> hidden -  is also the truth about torture. Unless President Obama appoints
> a bipartisan commission to gather the facts or Attorney General Holder
> appoints a special prosecutor, torture will remain the truth about the
> United States of America.  Barack Obama is decent and knows better than
> this. He courageously released the 4 torture memos unredacted over the
> yelps of four former CIA heads.  The legal side of the case – that American
> officials plainly tortured and that the legal advice on which they
> supposedly authorized the torture was thrown together after the torture had
> already been ordered and occurred, and would not, if a student had thrown
> it together hastily late at night, have passed a beginning law school class
> - is now clear internationally and even here at home.  It remains to be
> seen whether Obama  will reveal more information about torture, or whether
> the Democrats will slide back into acquiescence.  Will what the torturer
> knew be enshrined in an American police state in which citizens can be
> indefinitely detained and tortured at the whim of a President – as Jose
> Padilla was turned “into a chair” according to his lawyers in his three and
> a half years under torture in a West Virginia brig?  Or will we the people,
> finally, demand that the law to take its course?
>   William Boardman
> Reader Supported News
> *Obviously guilty: two presidents and much of two administrations*
>  According to recent polling, something like half of all Americans who
> were asked questions weighted to support torture answered that the torture
> was "justified." The good news here is that something like half of all
> Americans, responding to push-poll type questions, still aren't willing to
> say the government is justified in torturing in their name.
>  The more serious question is why "respected" polling organizations
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GZktKJX4j8l1C10xxchMZJp74C%2B7b0x9> use
> biased questions and why "respected" news organizations report the results
> uncritically. ABC News/Washington Post asks about "treatment of suspected
> terrorists" (no hint that innocents were tortured). Pew frames the question
> with "the September 11th terrorist attacks" (no hint the torture went on
> for years after). CBS News uses a false choice, "sometimes justified"
> versus "never justified," as well as calling the victims "suspected
> terrorists." HuffPost also uses "suspected terrorists" and adds "details
> about future terrorist attacks" to load the question further (no hint that
> no such person with such details has yet been identified).
>  In other words, we have dishonest polling organizations asking dishonest
> questions that dishonest media report as if they were not dishonest. And
> still something like half of the manipulated poll-takers are unwilling to
> endorse torture. That is a source of hope. Especially if some pollster
> would ask people if they think torture is legal anywhere?
>  Or maybe some pollster could ask people if they know how many times Bush
> and members of his administration have been convicted as war criminals for
> committing torture and other cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of
> people. The answer is: once. In 2012, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes
> Commission
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=lcyLxlGjTZnA0m7AovZPx5p74C%2B7b0x9> tried
> Bush and seven others in absentia. Bush and the others refused to
> participate. Kuala Lumpur's attempts to arrest Bush in Canada were blocked
> by the Canadian government.
>  George Bush and Dick Cheney knew perfectly well that what they wanted
> others to do in their name was both torture and illegal; that's why they
> went to such lengths to get compliant lawyers to call it something else and
> say that other thing was legitimate. So the list has to begin with them.
> Where it ends is a long way beyond 10. Everyone on the list is almost
> surely a participant or accomplice in years of torture. Each, at a minimum,
> needs to be publicly examined under oath, subject to all relevant law,
> including perjury.
>  *Top 10 Government Torturers, 2001-2014*
>  *1.* George Bush
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=XjYA03hGsN1XCOaNZKjNWZp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> As president, he's accountable for all the acts of his administration,
> especially the ones he ordered and/or approved. An anonymous CIA spokesman
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=FlR4RPm1XvyFP72r57OV45p74C%2B7b0x9> says
> Bush "fully authorized torture."Karl Rove
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GhvG4H8xVR%2FlvQS93VPIHsOdEbZdmYvZ> says
> Bush knew about and approved of torture, and participated in it, as did
> Rove. Dick Cheney
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Kb9O6oJEiSVjuHLktdah2Zp74C%2B7b0x9> says
> Bush knew and approved. In early 2008, Bush vetoed legislation
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=XXh9EgP60BYBrjc%2BT4VVipp74C%2B7b0x9> designed
> to control the CIA, including a ban on waterboarding. Congress failed to
> over-ride
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=%2FfUBZoRuPj48BZ2dwoP97Zp74C%2B7b0x9> the
> veto. Bush was convicted in Kuala Lumpur in 2012.
>  *2.* Dick Cheney
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=oSremm7CtEEM3ccgIEG7kZp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> The vice president says he knew, he approved, and he would "do it again in
> a minute." He has famously promoted "the dark side
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=YQRqUzHQTuOyo7kSZoMdLJp74C%2B7b0x9>."
> He was convicted in Kuala Lumpur in 2012.
>  *3.* Condoleezza Rice
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=BWdHugdqA4Ayqs9OuakJJJp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> National Security Advisor, knew, approved, and participated. She has pleaded
> bad memory
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=1SjGbt5QXP90ORrs%2BKdfhJp74C%2B7b0x9> to
> Congress, but still publicly defends torture now. Her assistant and
> successor, Stephen J. Hadley
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=7RL6z3Fihh%2B2EO9NKohC8wrdXAnThDyH>,
> was either in the loop or unbelievably feckless, as were an unknown number
> of staffers and members of the National Security Council
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ZvwVZewcCRbZNzDT0%2FRbVpp74C%2B7b0x9>
> .
>  *4.* Andrew Card
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=XzoNeqa9ALb3UPOqu4TSdZp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> White House chief of staff, knew, approved, and participated
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=UJ5208Lv5UcgK0pJKLTLzZp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> even though he's a Life Boy Scout. Why should Card, who accuses Barack
> Obama of misleading the American people
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=lyDR%2FtmYgsmtBVjqujiwoJp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> continue as president of Franklin Pierce University? Card's successor, Joshua
> Bolten
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=C2PKq1sda8MObK1S9PM8V5p74C%2B7b0x9>,
> and an unknown number of other White House staffers are almost surely
> accomplices. The son of a CIA father, Bolten is a lawyer who teaches at
> Princeton despite his ties to torture as well as a contempt of Congress
> citation for stonewalling in another matter. Bolten is also co-chair of the Clinton
> Bush Haiti Fund
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=HcIfG0HZBEfdNZRbb7zbyJp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> a non-profit organization that's supposedly helping a country the U.S. has
> tortured for the better part of two centuries.
>  *5.* Alberto Gonzales
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=HIOMw0yzCh90uzJmOQEPVZp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> As White House Counsel, and later as Attorney General, he not only knew,
> approved, and participated, he was one of the main legal apologists
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=vfKzrs93cl4m4nwu%2FJ3gGJp74C%2B7b0x9> for
> the torture regime. His successors, Harriet Miers
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=mik1EvCrsil6ZbpH%2BaVN%2Bpp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> an especially close Bush aide, and Fred Fielding
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=StgOyNf9d0Y14ZTHvv2WvJp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> a Watergate survivor thought by some to be Deep Throat, both likely knew
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=n2UAMGIvBUh4IiZUuQBxjZp74C%2B7b0x9>
>  and remained silent
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=RAo30Byxn3TNNByVElKmypp74C%2B7b0x9> about
> official torture. Fielding stonewalled
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=0MqzThBgTO083NneFSLAswrdXAnThDyH> Senate
> requests for documents relating to torture. Gonzales was convicted in Kuala
> Lumpur in 2012. Why should they not be disbarred?
>  *6.* Jay Bybee
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GIgINoOzQuuMyDvKGKuA6Zp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> As an Assistant Attorney General under the late (but guilty) John Ashcroft,
> Bybee was in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, the office that decides
> what's legal, subject to reversal only by the attorney general or the
> president. Bybee was the midwife of Bush torture policy justifications, a
> number of legal memoranda that allowed the Bush administration to claim
> that torture and other crimes were legal. These are generally known as the "Torture
> Memos
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=sSX2J1ppLR8sqCDojIPXTsOdEbZdmYvZ>"
> and illustrate the workings of a fine legal mind operating without
> conscience
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GjHgpw5SeWlBcDv1mkG8F5p74C%2B7b0x9>.
> Before some of his torture memos became public, Bybee was confirmed to a
> lifetime appointment as a federal judge. In 2013, Judge Bybee ruled, in an
> apparently gross conflict of interest
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=cOzVWpypF1ExBxtLL%2BvKIMOdEbZdmYvZ>,
> that government personnel should be immune from any liability for torture.
> Why should he not be disbarred? Or impeached? Bybee was convicted in Kuala
> Lumpur in 2012.
>  *7.* John Yoo
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=WCGEIazJM4Vm1tYQbEQoiJp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> Working in the Office of Legal Counsel under Bybee, Yoo was the prime
> author of several of the torture memos, built on the philosophical premise
> that there are no constraints on the president's power as
> commander-in-chief (a legal coup d'etat effectively rendering the
> Constitution irrelevant and the president omnipotent, all done in secret).
> In 2005, Yoo publicly affirmed
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=czEIQh2SJo7LJkKwMyNizJp74C%2B7b0x9> the
> authority of the president to order the crushing of an innocent child's
> testicles. In 2009, Barack Obama revoked Yoo's torture memos, but in 2010 a secret
> proceeding
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=vDHFo5L4Zp6AJxs2uJSSGZp74C%2B7b0x9> in
> the Justice Department "cleared" Yoo of wrongdoing. These days, Yoo
> continues to protect torturers
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NnEqjDdpJJGoTsXljBwiS5p74C%2B7b0x9> in
> the White House, while shifting any blame to the CIA. He continues to teach
> lat at the University of California, Berkeley. Why should he not be
> disbarred? He was convicted in Kuala Lumpur in 2012.
>  *8.* David Addington
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=UIyPvizWOSp0XsBhEDShJpp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> Legal counsel (and later chief of staff) to Dick Cheney, Addington was by many
> accounts
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=TGDIY4w6%2BNU1y7oh4r9zp5p74C%2B7b0x9> among
> the hardest of the hardliners driving to the dark side, backed by Cheney's
> full authority. He knew, he approved, and he participated in U.S. torture
> program and their legal fig leaves
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=jW3LEL7aQWvU%2BhyLsRSQ65p74C%2B7b0x9>.
> His predecessor as chief of staff, lawyer Scooter Libby
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=qvFEDuFYKiiS%2B2R5bRmOHpp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> also knew, approved, and participated in torture. He was convicted of
> perjury about other government crimes and disbarred (temporarily).
> Addington is now a vice president at the Heritage Foundation. He was
> convicted in Kuala Lumpur in 2012. Why should he not be disbarred?
>  *9. Donald Rumsfeld
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=nWLte%2BtONdxDIv0iMJnHapp74C%2B7b0x9>*.
> As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld knew, approved and participated in torture
> programs
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=4bRyfFjGoKQTxB2F2IhCXZp74C%2B7b0x9>wherever
> the military went. Abu Ghraib
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=4aRzBF6%2FjININTSI87cAN5p74C%2B7b0x9>
> . Bagram
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=FcggDJRGbdSuUXyMNTS%2Fy5p74C%2B7b0x9>
> . Guantanamo
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=dNQBM5OPlCIOAKbklCXE85p74C%2B7b0x9>.
> And other places, some unknown
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=0kkEPZl9%2F7xBdl9hiN6%2FoZp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> Rumsfeld expresses no remorse, least of all in the documentary "The
> Unknown Known
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=JEPX%2B75URiwdhwijSj0p4Jp74C%2B7b0x9>."
> Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=CtlN0jc%2FP%2Bc%2F0yG%2B6hKGeJp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> knew, approved, and participated in torture programs
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=0q26ejNgt1%2FogSV7JZzZx5p74C%2B7b0x9>,
> seeking information to justify the war
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=oSremm7CtEHczGWib6r435p74C%2B7b0x9> on
> Iraq. He is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. William
> Haynes
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=k1o1A2qSwyn8sGIFcy7elpp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> general counsel for the Defense Department, knew, approved, and
> participated in torture programs. For trying Guantanamo prisoners, Haynes
> designed the military commissions that were later ruled unconstitutional.
> In a 2002 memo
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=klJzJYsXmqDdx0l004uEe5p74C%2B7b0x9>,
> Haynes blocked further waterboarding of Guantanamo prisoners
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=x%2B8y7i5bueaKjRzXxAKNzpp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> citing the Armed Forces "tradition of restraint." Rumsfeld and Haynes were
> convicted in Kuala Lumpur. Why should Haynes not be disbarred?
>  *10.* James Mitchell
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=WXhDzSFcBQmT3ZgaAAtZhJp74C%2B7b0x9>
>  and Bruce Jessen
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=VZ5sAcjWKlcLePf1Hlq7rJp74C%2B7b0x9>
> . Private contractors
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=A9sgn4ItfHXOsYfifMbxopp74C%2B7b0x9> and
> PhD psychologists who call themselves Dr., Mitchell and Jessen were paid
> $81 million
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Ha8O78eDrAonf38cK92x75p74C%2B7b0x9> (on
> a $180 million contract) to torture people
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=uJglPjVMVRXUGBGKETc1wZp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> Both are retired Air Force officers on government pension. Reportedly the
> CIA has indemnified them against liability for any crimes they've
> committed. They were hands-on torturers and know, literally, where at least
> some of the bodies are buried. CIA general counsel John Rizzo
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=TjxzknzCcmCKsKMNqK7KIJp74C%2B7b0x9> (who
> also knew, approved, and participated in torture) called Mitchell and
> Jessen's techniques "sadistic and terrifying
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GhSSAfyGR62R3ZVaGiOWO5p74C%2B7b0x9>."
> No one knows how many private contractors, like Blackwater and others,
> tortured, disappeared, or murdered people, but they should be brought to
> account.
>  *11.* George Tenet
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=F%2FKN3yyJ96Nln%2Fh9KoKV75p74C%2B7b0x9>.
> The Clinton-appointed head of the CIA is awash in torture-guilt, but that
> pales compared to his role in lying the U.S. into an aggressive war in
> Iraq, one of the highest war crimes. In 2004, Bush gave him the
> Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he should give back. In 2007 he was
> still saying, "We don't torture people
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=3pewae%2FbwwHuXUVje8SbkJp74C%2B7b0x9>."
> His successors, especially Porter Goss
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GXIcH2v5D1AMfmBMMNBsy5p74C%2B7b0x9>
>  and Michael Hayden
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Ct3lvssIfhAxsJv4Y73za5p74C%2B7b0x9>,
> may have tidied up the CIA a bit, but they held no one accountable for the
> crimes they continued to deny
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=YQRqUzHQTuNmKV80obhQ%2FJp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> The new Director of National Intelligence
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=2fGS%2B%2F8FjstNsURwr%2FpT0Zp74C%2B7b0x9>
> , John Negroponte
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=9EF4K5%2Fbv6PgMEwpOwOBgMOdEbZdmYvZ>,
> forced Goss out at the CIA in favor of Negroponte's deputy Hayden
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=7Xzgayvk7NST73JJV%2F6xlJp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> then still a four-star Air Force general. As ambassador to Honduras,
> Negroponte wasimmersed in the dirty wars
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=e8T6oLOSbmM0kouSRIOk%2Bpp74C%2B7b0x9> of
> Central America and all the unaddressed crimes the U.S. sponsored there. In
> 2004, when the CIA inspector general reported that the CIA was violating
> the Convention Against Torture, assistant attorney general Steven Bradbury
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=QgK4Lx3B%2BXMSM14kJ4TStZp74C%2B7b0x9> in
> the Office of Legal Counsel wrote three more "torture memos" to quash the
> inspector general's concern. The new CIA head, John Brennan
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=W5tj9kMsYowavzsc5SKuSZp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> remains in denial and cover-up
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=osIVgLm0I6aw5%2F2ws1NOB5p74C%2B7b0x9>
>  mode.
>  *How does any nation recover from being a rogue state?*
>  Even though this top 10 list includes way more than 10
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=WCGEIazJM4VnYE%2F1W8w8EZp74C%2B7b0x9> people
> guilty of participating in torture, it's by no means an exhaustive list of
> all the government workers with greater or lesser culpability for crimes
> against humanity over the past three presidencies. Kidnapping,
> euphemistically called extraordinary rendition
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=70bE5CJ7i7venlONYiBYeZp74C%2B7b0x9>,
> grew popular in the Clinton administration and there's no reason to believe
> our government has abandoned the practice, any more than the government has
> given up torture, illegal detention, or assassination. The U.S. may be less
> of a rogue state now than it was a decade ago, but it's still far from an
> honorable member of the international community that accepts accountability
> under international law.
>  To be clear, torture has long been a chronic, low level vein of
> criminality by U.S. government operatives, with bipartisan collusion at
> least since the beginning of the Cold War. Torture (and murder) was endemic
> to the American Indian Wars of the 19th century and to U.S. military predation
> in the Philippines
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=cZZ975Pi62wYdehtbchWBJp74C%2B7b0x9> (1899-1913),
> where Mark Twain described the troops as "our uniformed assassins
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=FcggDJRGbdQwdtrYNPsKIZp74C%2B7b0x9>
> ."
>  The U.S. Defense Department, formerly the War Department, has considered
> torture one of its options during its entire existence, used sparingly
> perhaps by the U.S. government but encouraged among our proxies around the
> world. Starting in 1946, the School of the Americas
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=J5cO%2BKswFj5%2BZGx3vbkCbJp74C%2B7b0x9> (now
> known euphemistically as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
> Cooperation) has periodically trained the military officers of Latin
> American dictatorships in the uses of torture in peacetime.
>  The CIA and its proxies have used torture on an as-needed basis since
> the CIA was created in 1947. The CIA's Phoenix Program
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=cyIBUYbOzCydj0tNys41npp74C%2B7b0x9> in
> Viet-Nam combined torture and assassination in a years-long terror campaign
> against the Viet Cong (also terrorists). What the CIA did in Laos,
> Cambodia, and elsewhere is less well known (if known at all) but not less
> ugly and criminal. Some sense of official atrocity can be inferred from the CIA
> torture manuals
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=JzGS3GjwlaKb6fD4XVyLfJp74C%2B7b0x9> supplied
> to Central American dictatorships during the Reagan administration.
>  Even in the context of longstanding, institutionalized official torture
> -- Torturers 'R' US, in effect -- the Bush administration took American
> government crime to a new level not seen in official circles since a
> similar panic produced the Salem witch killings. What George Bush, Dick
> Cheney, and their accomplices did out of blind fear was to embrace torture
> as right and just. Previously, even the structure of torture programs
> reflected guilty knowledge that the practice is abhorrent, hence better
> done by others on our behalf whether in Iran or Argentina, Iraq or
> Guatemala, wherever perceived witches threatened supposed American
> interests.
>  The United Nations Special Rapporteur
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=sNGjMtSKPu5%2BHFiUqKeDK5p74C%2B7b0x9> on
> counterterrorism and human rights is a British lawyer named Ben Emmerson
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ZvwVZewcCRY2j0LB69mIBpp74C%2B7b0x9>.
> Regarding the CIA torture report, he issued a statement saying
> <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=kGHRixcmNWLVs4NuHyfmMcOdEbZdmYvZ>,
> in part:
>  "The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in
> today's report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties
> commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.
>  The fact that the policies revealed in this report were *authorised at a
> high level within the US Government provides no excuse whatsoever*.
> Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal accountability.
>  "International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public
> officials who have engaged in acts of torture. This applies not only to the
> actual perpetrators but also to those senior officials within the US
> Government who devised, planned and authorised these crimes.
>  "*As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring
> those responsible to justice*... States are not free to maintain or
> permit impunity for these grave crimes.
>  "It is no defence for a public official to claim that they were acting
> on superior orders...
>  "However, *the heaviest penalties should be reserved for those most
> seriously implicated in the planning and purported authorisation of these
> crimes*... There is therefore no excuse for shielding the perpetrators
> from justice any longer.
>
> The US Attorney General is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges
> against those responsible.
>  "Torture is a crime of universal jurisdiction. The perpetrators may be
> prosecuted by any other country they may travel to. However, the primary
> responsibility for bringing them to justice rests with the US Department of
> Justice and the Attorney General." [emphasis added]
>
>  The Obama administration has a moral and legal duty to bring American
> war criminals of three administrations to justice. Not to do so is to
> continue to use American exceptionalism as a justification for the worst
> crimes against humanity. The national precedent is to honor those most
> responsible for government crimes, but what honor is there in that?"
>
> ************************************************************************************
> Alan Gilbert is John Evans Professor at the Josef Korbel School of
> International Studies of the University of Denver.  He is the author of the
> books Marx’s Politics, Democratic Individuality, Must Global Politics
> Constrain Democracy? and Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for
> Emancipation in the War of Independence.   Gilbert is a democratic theorist
> and also writes poetry.   He has recently been one of the authors of the
> University of Denver’s Report on John Evans’ role in the 1864 Sand Creek
> Massacre, central to Colorado’s and the University’s founding.
>
> ...
>
>     ------------------------------

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